actions; but provides
that four knights, chosen by the county, shall sit with them to keep
them honest. When the king's justices were known to be so corrupt and
servile that the people would not even trust them to sit alone, in jury
trials, in _civil_ actions, how preposterous is it to suppose that they
would not only suffer them to sit, but to sit alone, in _criminal_ ones.

It is entirely incredible that Magna Carta, which makes such careful
provision in regard to the king's justices sitting in civil actions,
should make no provision whatever as to their sitting in _criminal_
trials, if they were to be allowed to sit in them at all. Yet Magna
Carta has no provision whatever on the subject.[93]

But what would appear to make this matter absolutely certain is, that
unless the prohibition that "no bailiff, &c., _of ours_ shall hold pleas
of our crown," apply to all officers of the king, justices as well as
others, it would be wholly nugatory for any practical or useful purpose,
because the prohibition could be evaded by the king, at any time, by
simply changing the titles of his officers. Instead of calling them
"sheriffs, coroners, constables and bailiffs," he could call them
"_justices_," or anything else he pleased; and this prohibition, so
important to the liberty of the people, would then be entirely defeated.
The king also could make and unmake "justices" at his pleasure; and if
he could appoint any officers whatever to preside over juries in
criminal trials, he could appoint any tool that he might at any time
find adapted to his purpose. It was as easy to make justices of Jeffreys
and Scroggs, as of any other material; and to have prohibited all the
king's officers, _except his justices_, from presiding in criminal
trials, would therefore have been mere fool's play.

We can all perhaps form some idea, though few of us will be likely to
form any adequate idea, of what a different thing the trial by jury
would have been _in practice_, and of what would have been the
difference to the liberties of England, for five hundred years last
past, had this prohibition of Magna Carta, upon the king's officers
sitting in the trial of criminal cases, been observed.

The principle of this chapter of Magna Carta, as applicable to the
governments of the United States of America, forbids that any officer
appointed either by the executive or _legislative_ power, or dependent
upon them for their salaries, or responsible to them b